The seafaring Phoenicians, Greeks and Carthaginians successively settled along the Mediterranean coast and founded trading colonies there over a period of several centuries.

Around 1,100 BC Phoenician merchants founded the trading colony of Gadir or Gades (modern day Cádiz) near Tartessos. In the 8th century BC the first Greek colonies, such as Emporion (modern Empúries), were founded along the Mediterranean coast on the East, leaving the south coast to the Phoenicians. The Greeks are responsible for the name Iberia, after the river Iber (Ebro in Spanish). In the 6th century BC the Carthaginians arrived in Iberia while struggling with the Greeks for control of the Western Mediterranean. Their most important colony was Carthago Nova (Latin name of modern day Cartagena).

Hispania supplied the Roman Empire with food, olive oil, wine and metal. The emperors Trajan, Hadrian and Theodosius I, the philosopher Seneca and the poets Martial and Lucan were born in Spain. The Spanish Bishops held the Council at Elvira in 306.

Most of Spain's present languages, religion, and laws originate from this Roman period.

Very soon the Muslim emirate split into small kingdoms. Christian and Muslim kingdoms fought and allied among themselves, with the Christians driving the Moorish forces out of the northern most parts of the peninsula within a few decades. The Muslim taifa kings competed in patronage of the arts, and the Jewish population of Iberia set the basis of Sephardic culture. Much of Spain's distinctive art originates from this seven-hundred-year period, and many Arabic words made their way into Castilian (Spanish) and Catalan, and from them to other European languages.

The Moorish capital was Córdoba, in the southern portion of Spain known as Andalucía. During the time of Arab occupation, most of the Iberian peninsula was in relative peace, with large populations of Jews, Christians and Muslims living in close quarters, and at its peak some non-Muslims were appointed to high offices. At its best it produced great architecture, art, and great Muslim and Jewish scholars played a great part in reviving the study of ancient Greek philosophy, making their own important contributions to it, and becoming one of the most important ways by which these studies were revived in Europe, with historic consequences. However there were also restrictions and imposts on non-Muslims, which tended to grow after the death of Al-Hakam III in 976, and worsened after the fall of Al-Andalus in 1031. Later waves of stricter Muslim groups from north Africa even led to some persecutions of non-Muslims, forcing some (including some Muslim scholars) to seek safety in the then still relatively tolerant city of Toledo after its Christian conquest in 1085.

The long, convoluted period of expansion of the Christian kingdoms, beginning in 722, only eleven years after the Moorish invasion, is called the Reconquista. As early as 739, the northwestern region of Galicia, which hosted one of the most important centres of western medieval Christian pilgrimage, Santiago de Compostela, had been liberated from Moorish occupation by forces from neighbouring Asturias. The 1085 conquest of the central city of Toledo had largely brought to an end the reconquest of the northern half of Iberia. The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 heralded the collapse, within a few decades, of the great Moorish strongholds, such as Seville and Córdoba, in the south-west. By the middle of the thirteenth century most of the Iberian peninsula had been reconquered, leaving only Granada as a small tributary state in the south. It ended in 1492, when Isabella and Ferdinand captured the southern city of Granada, the last Moorish city in Spain. The Treaty of Granada[1] guaranteed religious toleration toward Muslims while Jews were expelled that year. A 1499 Muslim uprising was crushed and was followed by the first of the expulsions of Muslims, in 1502, from Isabel's and Ferdinand's new, combined, Christian kingdom. The year 1492 was also marked by the discovery of the New World. The queen and the king funded the history changing voyages of Columbus. The defeats of the French army, by relying more on well trained regular soldiers and the heavy use of hand guns and cannon against armoured knights, in the Italian Wars from 1494, saw the emergance of the new kingdom as a European superpower.

Renaissance in Spain

Until the late of the 15th century, Castile and Léon, Aragon and Navarre were independent states, with independent languages, monarchs, armies and, in the case of Aragon and Castile, two empires: the former with one in the Mediterranean and the new, rapidly growing one in the Americas. The process of political unification continued into the early sixteenth century. It was the unification of these seperate Iberian empires that became the base of what is in now referred to as the Spanish Empire.

By 1512, most of the kingdoms of present-day Spain were politically unified, although not as a modern, centralized state (in contemporary minds, "Spain" was a geographic term meaning Iberian Peninsula, not the present-day state called Spain). The grandson of Isabella and Ferdinand, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor but called in Spain Carlos I, extended his crown to other places in Europe and the rest of the world. The unification of Iberia was complete when Charles V's son, Philip II, became King of Portugal in 1580, as well as of the other Iberian Kingdoms (collectively known as "Spain" at that time).

It was also the wealthiest nation in Europe, but the uncontrolled influx of goods and minerals from Spain's colonies in the Americas resulted in rampant inflation and economic depression. Religious wars supported by the Spanish crown, especially in the Netherlands, further burdened the empire's economy.

A series of long and costly wars and revolts followed in the early 17th century, and began a steady decline of Spanish power in Europe from the 1640s. Controversy over succession to the throne consumed the country and much of Europe during the first years of the 18th century (see War of the Spanish Succession). It was only after this war ended and a new dynasty—the French Bourbons—was installed that a centralized Spanish state was established and the first Bourbon king Philip V of Spain in 1707 dissolved the Aragon court and unified the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon into a single kingdom of Spain, abolishing many of the regional privileges and autonomy (fueros) that had hampered the Habsburgs.

Of note during the 17th century was the cultural effloresence now known as the Spanish Golden Age.

Historically, the period of the mid 17th century to the early 20th centuries was a failure for the Spanish state compared to Northern Europe. The lingering decline of the Spanish empire was long-lasting, due in large part, ironically, to its spectacular earlier successes in the 15th and 16th centuries that led to the centuries of treasure fleets that had brought large quantities of silver and gold into the country from the American mines and spices and luxuries from Asia across the Pacific. These shipments engendered inflation that ate away at Spanish trades, crafts and commerce, making the country almost totally dependant upon imports and thereby undermined its long term economic development. In fact some of the precursors of a modern view of economics was initiated by observations of this corrosive inflationary process by the School of Salamanca. The Spanish economy was effectively hollowed out in the late 16th and early 17th centuries of the skills, industry and infrastructure that would be needed to replace the income from the American mines as they petered out during the middle and late 17th century. Making things worse were the constant wars defending the vast world empire against jealous rivals, internal splits and the European wars, especially the Thirty Years War and Eighty Years War where Spain's energies were constantly drained defending the Habsburg's dynastic and religious interests, including the Counter Reformation, burdening the people with taxes and military duties and diverting massive resources away from essential infrastructure such as roads - a necessary precondition to modernising such a dispersed and rugged country. It is a fact that even at the peak of the inflow of precious metals from America in the last decade of the 16th century, the main source of the crown's revenues were taxes on ordinary people. This combination of a hollowed out, unadaptable economy, the endless burden of wars and the diminished precious metals revenue led to steep economic and demographic decline in the middle and late 17th century, aggravated by failed harvests and plagues. Given the hardships it is astonishing that the Habsburg dominions held together at all at this time. There was a period of slow recovery and even some modernisation, throughout the eighteenth century, and even the beginnings of industrialisation in Catalonia, and modernisation and expansion of the iron and steel industries in the Basque country, and a spectacular growth (from a relatively low base) in general trade in the last two decades of that century, but this promising turnaround was totally disrupted by the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars at the beginning of the 19th century that soon triggered the loss of the vast American territories and plunged the country into endemic political instability, which except for short periods, lasted until the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939 - the fourth civil war in less than a century and a half. Pockets of modernity in Catalonia and the north would appear, but Spain's economic and political relative decline overall mirrored in general, if not in detail, the fate of other regions of Southern Europe such as Portugal, the Italian states, the Balkans and central Europe, as much of the rapidly growing global oceanic trade, pioneered by Spain and Portugal, was diverted to northwestern Europe.

Although cultural contacts with Asian and African nations across the Mediterranean enriched the cultural mosaic of the region in terms of food, music, literature, architecture they did little to solve the region's social and economic challenges.

Futhermore Islam, as well as the Roman culture, placed little emphasis on technological education or sustainable economic development. For centuries, the region was full of frontiersmen from both Christian and Muslim sides looking for loot, revenge and destruction of their enemies. These influences led to Spain being over-run by a numerous nobility that wished only to serve in the military or government service and were not interested in industry or trade. This attitude was especially pronounced in the south. This problem was in fact recognised by the Enlightenment era Bourbon reformers in the 18th century who tried to "ennoble" the trades. Indeed it also goes back to Charles I's way of dealing with the popular uprising known as the Castilian War of the Communities (1520 - 1522), where he suppressed the uprising caused by the burdens of excessive foreign adventurism in Europe by re-instating the power and privileges (such as not paying taxes) of the nobility to win their support. In short, as the medieval nobility were steadily losing their influence in the rival states to the north (in France the monarchy did all it could to this end as they saw the nobility as dangerous rivals and a burden on the state), Habsburg policy led to a reversal of this social evolution within Spain itself.

Even after the war was over, much of the previous legacy was deeply entrenched in Spanish culture and made it poorly compatible with the rest of Europe. As the flow of gold from Latin America vanished, Spain had nothing to offer in return. However "the Disaster" of 1898, as it was called, led to Spain's cultural Silver Age at the turn of the twentieth century, liberated it from the burden of empire and once again re-started the difficult process of modernisation that had begun in the eighteenth century.

After World War II, being one of few surviving fascist regimes in Europe (though some say it was really just a brutal old fashioned reactionary regime), Spain was politically and economically isolated and was kept out of the United Nations until 1955, when it became strategically important for U.S. president Eisenhower to establish a military presence in the Iberian peninsula. This opening to Spain was aided by Franco's opposition to communism. In the 1960s, more than a decade later than other western European countries, Spain began to enjoy economic growth and gradually transformed into a modern industrialeconomy with a thriving tourism sector. Growth continued well into the 1970s, with Franco's government going to great lengths to shield the Spanish people from the effects of the oil crisis.

21st century

On March 11, 2004, a series of bombs exploded in commuter trains in Madrid, Spain. These resulted in 191 people dead and 1,460 wounded. It also had a significant effect on the upcoming elections in Spain, due in part to the ruling government's insistence that the ETA was the prime suspect in the bombings, even as the evidence of Muslim extremist terrorism rapidly emerged from the police investigation and the press. see the 11 March 2004 Madrid train bombings article for more information

The legislative branch is made up of the Congress of Deputies (Congreso de los Diputados) with 350 members, elected by popular vote on block lists by proportional representation to serve four-year terms, and a Senate or Senado with 259 seats of which 208 are directly elected by popular vote and the other 51 appointed by the regional legislatures to also serve four-year terms.

Spain is, at present, what is called a State of Autonomies, formally unitary but, in fact, functioning as a Federation of Autonomous Communities, each one with different powers (for instance, some have their own educational and health systems, others do not) and laws. There are some differences within this system, since power has been devolved from the centre to the periphery asymmetrically, with some autonomous governments (especially those dominated by nationalist parties) seeking a more federalist—or even confederate—kind of relationship with Spain, now the Central Government is dealing with autonomous governments for the transfer of more autonomy. This novel system of asymmetrical devolution has been described as a coconstitutionalism and has similarities to the devolution process adopted by the United Kingdom since 1997.

The terrorist group, ETA (Basque Homeland and Freedom), is attempting to achieve Basque independence through violent means, including bombings and killings of politicians and police. Although the Basque Autonomous government does not condone any kind of violence, their different approaches to the separatist movement are a source of tension between the federal and Basque governments.

On 17 May2005, all the parties in the Congress of Deputies, except the PP, passed the Central Government's motion of beginning peace talks with the ETA with no political concessions and only if it gives up all its weapons. PSOE, CiU, ERC, PNV, IU-ICV, CC and the mixed group -BNG, CHA, EA y NB- supported it with a total of 192 votes, while the 147 PP parliamentaris objected.

On February 20th 2005, Spain became the first country to allow its people to vote on the European Union constitution that was signed in October 2004. The rules states that if any country rejects the constitution then the constitution will be declared void. The final result was very strongly in affirmation of the constitution, making Spain the first country to approve the constitution via referendum (Hungary, Lithuania and Slovenia approved it before Spain, but they did not hold referenda).

Spanish territories claimed by other countries

Morocco claims the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla and the uninhabited Vélez, Alhucemas, Chafarinas, and Perejil islands, all on the Northern coast of Africa. Morocco points out that those territories were obtained when Morocco could not do anything to prevent it and has never signed treaties cessioning them.

Portugal does not recognize Spain's sovereignty over the territory of Olivenza. Spain and Portugal disagree on the interpretation of the outputs of the Congress of Vienna (1815), which according to Portugal stated the return of the territory to Portugal. Spain claims it is a de jure sovereignty according to International law.

Economy

Spain's mixed capitalist economy supports a GDP that on a per capita basis is 87% that of the four leading West European economies. The centre-right government of former Prime Minister Aznar successfully worked to gain admission to the first group of countries launching the European single currency, the euro, on 1 January1999. The Aznar administration continued to advocate liberalization, privatization, and deregulation of the economy and introduced some tax reforms to that end. Unemployment fell steadily under the Aznar administration but remains high at 9.8% as of August 2005 - but this (still unacceptable) level must be seen in the light of levels of over 20% at the start of the 1990s. Growth of 2.4% in 2003 was satisfactory given the background of a faltering European economy, and has steadied since at an annualised rate of about 3.3% in mid 2005. The Prime Minister Rodríguez Zapatero, whose party won the election three days after the Madrid train bombings in March 2004, plans to reduce government intervention in business, combat tax fraud, and support innovation, research and development, but also intends to reintroduce labour market regulations that had been scrapped by the Aznar government. Adjusting to the monetary and other economic policies of an integrated Europe - and reducing unemployment - will pose challenges to Spain over the next few years. According to World Bank GDP figuresfrom 2004, Spain has the 8th largest economy in the world.

There is general concern that Spain's model of economic growth (based largely on mass tourism, the construction industry, and manufacturing sectors) is faltering and may prove unsustainable over the long term. The first report of the Observatory on Sustainability (Observatorio de Sostenibilidad) - published in 2005 and funded by Spain's Ministry of the Environment and Alcalá University - reveals that the country's per capita GDP grew by 25% over the last ten years, while greenhouse gas emissions have risen by 45% since 1990. Although Spain's population grew by less than 5% between 1990 and 2000, urban areas expanded by no less than 25% over the same period. Meanwhile, Spain's energy consumption has doubled over the last 20 years and is currently rising by 6% per annum. This is particularly worrying for a country whose dependence on imported oil (meeting roughly 80% of Spain's energy needs) is one of the greatest in the EU. Large-scale unsustainable development is clearly visible along Spain's Mediterranean coast in the form of housing and tourist complexes, which are placing severe strain on local land and water resources.

The Spanish Constitution, although affirming the sovereignty of the Spanish Nation, recognizes historical nationalities.

The Castilian-derived Spanish (called both español and castellano in the language itself) is the official language throughout Spain, but other regional languages are also spoken. Without mentioning them by name, the Spanish Constitution recognizes the possibility of regional languages being co-official in their respective autonomous communities. The following languages are co-official with Spanish according to the appropriate Autonomy Statutes.

Occitan (the Aranese dialect). Spoken in the Vall d'Aran in Catalonia.

Catalan, Galician, Aranese (Occitan) and Spanish (Castilian) are all descended from Latin and have their own dialects, some championed as separate languages by their speakers (the Valencià of València, a dialect of Catalan, is one example).

In the touristic areas of the Mediterranean costas and the islands, German and English are spoken by tourists, foreign residents and tourism workers.

Many linguists claim that most of the Spanish language variants spoken in Latin America (Mexican, Argentinian, Colombian, Peruvian, etc. variants) descended from the Spanish spoken in southwestern Spain (Andalusia, Extremadura and Canary Islands).

Identities

The Spanish Constitution of 1978, in its second article, recognizes historic entities ("nationalities," a carefully chosen word in order to avoid "nations") and regions, inside the unity of the Spanish nation.

But Spain's identity is sometimes, in fact, an overlap of different regional identities, some of them even conflicting.

Castile is considered by many to be the "core" of Spain. However, this may just be a reflection of the fact that the Castilian national identity was the first one to be quashed by the Spanish Empire in the revolt of the Communards (comuneros).

The opposite is the case of a large part of Catalans, Basques and, in some measure, Galicians, who quite frequently identify primarily with Galicia, Catalonia and the Basque Country first, with Spain only second, or even third, after Europe. For example, according to the last CIS survey, 44% of Basques identify themselves first as Basques (only 8% first as Spaniards); 40% of Catalans do so with their autonomous community (20% identify firstly with Spain), and 32% Galicians with Galicia (9% with Spain). Even more remarkable, almost all comunities have a majority of people identifying as much with Spain as with the Autonomous Community (except Madrid, where Spain is the primary identity, and Catalonia, Basque Country and Balearics, where people tend to identity more with their Autonomous Community). Even Castille-Leon has 57% of people regarding themselves as much Spaniards as they are Castillians.

The situation is even more confusing, since there are regions with ambiguous identities, like Navarre, Valencia, the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, etc. There has been a lot of internal migration (rural exodus) from regions like Galicia, Andalusia and Extremadura to Madrid, Catalonia, Basque Country and the islands.

Spain became a unified crown with the union of Castile and Aragon in 1492 and the annexation of Navarre in 1515. Until 1714, Spain was a loose confederation of kingdoms and statelets under one king, until King Philip V (Felipe V) removed the autonomous status of the Aragonese crown. Navarre and the Basque Provinces, however, kept a high degree of autonomy within their legal and financial system (Fueros). Moreover, the creation of a unified state in the 19th and 20th centuries has led to the present situation, which is apparently simple, but sometimes extremely confusing. During the Second Spanish Republic (1931–1936), Catalonia and the Basque country were given limited self-government, which was lost after the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and restored in 1978 during the transition to democracy.

Minority groups

Since the 16th century, the most important minority group in the country have been the Gitanos. Other historical minorities are Mercheros (or Quinquis) and Vaqueiros de alzada. The latter, meaning "Mountain cow-breeders" dwell in mountain ranges in the Principality of Asturias and have kept historically apart from the valley dwellers.

The number of immigrants or foreign residents has tripled to 3.69 million in less than five years, according the latest figures (2005) of National Statics Institute. They currently make up around 10 per cent of the official total population. The rise of population in Spain in recent years was largely due to them. Nearly half of all immigrants have neither residence nor work permits.

Religion

Roman Catholicism is, by far, the most popular religion in the country. According to several sources (CIA World Fact Book 2005, Spanish official polls and others), from 80% to 94% self-identify as Catholics, whereas around 6% to 13% identify with either other religions or none at all. It is important to note, however, that many Spaniards identify themselves as Catholics just because they were baptised, even though they are not very religious at all (in fact some polls show that 14% do not believe in any God). According to recent surveys (New York Times, April 19, 2005) only around 18 per cent of Spaniards regularly attend mass. Of those under 30, only about 14 per cent attend.

Further evidence of the secular nature of modern Spain can be seen in the widespread support for the legalisation of marriage for homosexuals - over 70% of Spaniards support gay marriage according to a 2004 study by the Centre of Sociological Investigations. Indeed, in June 2005 a bill was passed by 187 votes to 147 to allow gay marriage, making Spain the third country in the European Union to allow same-sex couples the same rights as heterosexual ones. Proposed changes to the divorce laws to make the process quicker and to eliminate the need for a guilty party are also popular. In many ways modern Spain can be described as a secular country with a strong Catholic tradition.

According to membership [2], the second religion of Spain is the organization of the Jehovah's Witnesses with 103,784 active publishers; there are also many Protestant denominations, all of them with less than 50 000 members, and about 20,000 Mormons. Evangelism has been better received among Gypsies than among the general population; pastors have integrated flamenco music in their liturgy. Taken together, all self-described "Evangelicals" slightly surpass Jehovah's Witnesses in number.

The recent waves of immigration have led to an increasing number of Muslims, who have about 800,000 members. Muslims were forcibly converted in 1492 and then expelled in the 16th century.

Since the expulsion of the Sephardim in 1492, Judaism was practically nonexistent until the 19th century, when Jews were again permitted to enter the country. Currently there are around 14,000 Jews in Spain, all arrivals in the past century. There are also many Spaniards (in Spain and abroad) who claim Jewish ancestry to the Conversos, and still practice certain customs. Spain is believed to have been about 8 per cent Jewish on the eve of the Spanish Inquisition. See History of the Jews in Spain.

Over the past thirty years, Spain has become a more secularised society. The number of believers has decreased significantly and for those who believe the degree of accordance and practice to their church is quite diverse.

According to the latest official poll (CIS, 2002), 80% of Spaniards self-identify as Catholic, 12% as non-believer, and 1% as other (the remaining 7% declined to state). Of the 1.4% identifying as other, 29% identified as Evangelical Christian, 26% as Jehovah's Witnesses and 3,5% as Muslim (the rest either mentioned smaller religions or declined to state). According to the same poll, 73% believe in God, 14% don't and 12% are unsure (1% declined to state). Additionally, according to this poll, only 41% believe in Heaven. 24% of the Spaniards think that the Bible is just a fable. Only 25% of Catholics go to church at least once a week.